All Forum Posts by: Nancy Roth

@Charlie MacPherson I thought of that too. I don't think people who have no legal status are in a protected class. I think I'm on pretty solid ground that they violated the terms of the lease, twice. 

@Thomas S. I don't think your comments are accurate or called for. I am concerned and involved in my business but I don't know all the answers all the time and I do go to colleagues when I need help solving a problem. Bigger Pockets is just an extension of my local community of landlords, and it's refreshing and helpful to receive these responses, whether or not I decide to act on them. This is how I learn and improve my business and do it better.

Maybe you should go get some breakfast, Thomas S. 

@Kim Meredith Hampton that is a great insight, and it's exactly opposite my first instinct, which was to see the tie between tenant and property manager as giving the tenant an extra stake in the relationship. May I ask you to elaborate on that no-renting-to-employees policy?  Is that out of a bad experience, or is it strictly preventive of a conflict of interest? 

@Gary Nelson yeah, that has crossed my mind. This is already my third property manager. I really need support with this property and the prospect of searching for yet another manager is disappointing, to say the least. I'm more inclined to keep him in and force him to deal with this, since he had a part in it, rather than start over. Extremely frustrating. 

Thanks to everyone for contributing. 

@Braden Downs Extra tenants are the brother and sister of Cesar, and they each have a young child under age 5. So yes, definitely wear and tear. Good point about noise complaint, but I was using that as an example. A woman in my area was deported for a traffic violation. A man was recently picked up after dropping his child off at school. So it doesn't seem to take much, and I'm really sorry they are not conducting themselves differently. I like your idea of a 25% or more rent increase and put the extra away for the wear and tear. Thanks for writing.

@Andre Rosemberg Very helpful. I haven't met them yet, I was kinda hoping not to have to deal with them (isn't that the manager's job?). But maybe I have to be the one to cut to the chase. Many thanks.

A 3/1 townhouse I own in Baltimore was trashed by a Section 8 tenant who moved out at the end of 2016. I spent more than I expected getting it back in shape. Then had difficulty renting it for several months, for various reasons, some of them my fault. 

Finally brought in a property manager, who immediately placed a tenant, one of his workers, who for some time has wanted to move out of the efficiency he occupied with wife and child. 

So far so good. I liked that the tenant would have a work relationship with the property manager, so would have an extra reason to not mess up the unit. They were set to move in first week of August. 

BUT--the tenant, named Cesar, immediately brought in 2 relatives and their 2 children after he signed the lease for only himself and his wife and child. That makes 7 people—the legal limit for a 3 bedroom house. Had he revealed his plans up front, and had his relatives signed the lease with him, maybe I'd feel differently. But he chose to do it in this sneaky way instead, thereby losing my trust.

Last week he also held a big family party with a lot of yelling and noise that caused a disturbance in the neighborhood (a neighbor called me to complain). I have built good relationships with the neighbors, many of whom are elder homeowners, who watch my property protectively. BTW, it was the neighbor who revealed that there were a great many more people in the house than I'd bargained for. 

Finally, the property manager screened them and I didn't get involved (foolishly, it turns out). But what I've learned subsequently makes me think the family is in the country illegally. Cesar's ID is a provisional driver’s license. His wife’s ID is her driver’s license from Guatemala. 

Now, if they had shown better judgment, their legal status wouldn’t bother me. But the way things are these days, if someone calls the police, say, for a noise violation, they could wind up deported! This is not farfetched under this administration, such things are happening in the community daily. So if they don't have the sense to act responsibly and protect themselves in this insane environment, they put my investment in jeopardy.

Also I have no idea about his relatives—their legal status, their jobs, their income, their credit, their criminal records--the manager has yet to screen them. I also worry about the wear and tear of seven people in the unit even if technically it does not exceed the legal number.

Property manager thinks I should let them stay, all 7 of them, but negotiate a higher rent and a 2-year lease. He thinks we can do quarterly inspections to ensure they are taking care of the unit, and make the tenant responsible for getting them fixed. 

I truly don’t know what to do. Should I let the unit be empty again after all those months? Let this family stay, even if I don't trust them? 

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious in this situation. Please tell me what it is! 

Many thanks,

Nancy Roth

Washington, DC

Sorry @Colin Williams, just seeing this. I am still circulating among service providers, practitioners, and parents. Do not have a contract yet. 

Yes, the Medicaid rules have changed so they no longer pay for the housing component in the support services. Everything in Sidoti's model depends on Medicaid support that no longer exists. Medicaid now only pays for services, like caseworker support, therapy, maybe transportation, etc.--not rent! You must now form your leasing relationship with the disabled individual (presumably being coached by case workers and family). That way, if things are not to the person's liking they can keep their services but change their living space. They are not trapped in a group house, with their caregivers, and with people they may or may not get along with. In that scenario the person faces losing 100% of their government support if they move, or if they manage to hold onto their funding they have to start all new therapeutic and caregiving relationships, a highly challenging adjustment. No one wants to do that. 

I'm told best practice for residential arrangements for adults with disabilities is client-centered--not program centered, not nonprofit-centered. Everything Sidoti does is based on the old model. 

Also you know what's really egregious about the Sidoti CD set, which was recorded in 2001, is that he claims throughout the series that you need to listen to the last CD in the series to get his method for making contact with the service providers. "You can do it your way and fail, or you can do it my way and succeed," he says (paraphrasing) over and over again. In order to discover "his way" you need to break a seal binding that final CD to the jacket--and once you do that you can't return the set and get your money back (a cool $1000, y'all). Everything he puts out in the set of "free" CDs is designed to persuade you that nothing you've heard works without that last CD. 

I got the set from a couple of different friends. One got it in 2016, and had not yet broken the seal. The other had bought it in 2008, and had listened to the final CD. Listened to the free CDs in both versions, they were 100% the same content, no updates. Then listened to the final CD for his "secret" to contact the agency. You know what it is? Don't call the agency, write a letter. If you call, the person answering the telephone won't know what you are talking about and will lead you astray. 

FALSE. The series was recorded (and repeated and repeated unchanged for years) before the Internet had fully taken hold in the nonprofit sector. That era is over. 

Every nonprofit has a website now--it's essential to their fundraising effort. Now you go online to the website of the nonprofit, find the person you need to contact (in housing or residential services), and call him or her directly, or send a direct email. There's no gatekeeper at the front desk anymore. 

How do you identify the service organizations? Go to your state agency that funds service providers for residents who have been identified by the state as having disabilities. In Maryland it's the Developmental Disabilities Administration. They post the names of all the organizations that have state contracts to deliver services to the people that need them. There were about 200 organizations listed in my region of central Maryland. I went through them and pulled the 40-45 that mention housing referral services on their websites, and started calling them, one by one. 

Also I started going to meetings, signed up for information releases from DDA, began talking to people wherever I went. I soon found that Sidoti's model is completely outmoded. Medicaid has changed, and as far as I can tell, there is no "use it or lose it" funding in social services anymore, in fact, everyone is scrambling with funding shortfalls. 

Read the headlines, for heaven's sake. How do you suppose that wall on the Mexican border is going to be paid for? By deep cuts in services to the most vulnerable, that's how. 

You don't need this CD set, in fact, the CDs may do you harm. If you want to accomplish something you just have to buckle down and do the work. There is no short cut. If you decide to do something with this, I hope you will post an update.
Best regards,

Nancy Roth

What is the DVD set? There's a really old one by Nick Sedoti that I listened to but it's terribly out of date, and the Medicaid rules have changed since he published it. Is that the one you have?

I was loaned the Sidoti CDs by a friend. It is terribly out of date. I did not find it relevant or helpful. Medicaid rules keep evolving, and states all differ in how they set up their programs, some do it well, others just create big bureaucratic mess. Network within the community that is delivering services to or advocating for people with disabilities. You can learn a lot that way, and a path will open up for you to find your niche in your real estate market.

@Jacko Racko Please tell me "what gentrification has done in Baltimore" if you don't mind. Have you ever been to Baltimore?